Chayton Black

Chayton Black (died 29 December 1890) was a mixed-race Lakota Sioux warrior who was one of the Sioux commanders at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876. The son of a Lakota father and the Falcon Company owner Amelia Black, Chayton Black originally sided with the United States and the white settlers, but he defected to the Native Americans after he discovered that his friend Billy Holme had instigated war between the settlers and the Sioux to line his own pockets. He was killed in the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890 fourteen years later.

Biography
Chayton Black was the son of Falcon Company owner Amelia Black, a woman of mixed Mohawk descent (through her father Nathaniel Black) and white descent through her mother, and a Lakota Sioux father. Chayton's father died when he was young, and he never knew much about him, but that he was a gentle man. His mother raised him, and he became a representative of the Falcon Company, being given a contract to build the railroad along the Bozeman Trail out of Fort Laramie in 1866. However, Black and Quartermaster Billy Holme had to fight off Red Cloud and Crazy Horse's Sioux in order to build the railroad and two towns along the Bozeman Trail, and Black befriended Holme. The two of them would fight off the Sioux and secure white expansion, and Black built new railroads to the West, becoming a wealthy man.

The Black Hills gold rush of 1876 changed everything for Chayton Black. He was nearly blinded by gold, helping Holme in chasing off rival miners from Spain and destroying two Sioux villages, but he decided to arrange a meeting with Crazy Horse himself to negotiate an end to the raids. However, the meeting was ambushed by Holme and his miners, killing several Native Americans. Black regretted working with Holme, and he decided to defect to the Sioux when he was ordered to massacre women and children at a Sioux village after building a fort for Holme. Black gathered an army of Sioux warriors and destroyed the US Army fort and, when confronted by Colonel George Armstrong Custer, he told him that Holme had provoked the violence between whites and natives. Black asked for just one day to capture Holme and bring him to Custer to answer for his crimes, and Custer decided to allow him that one day. Black earned the trust of the Sioux and destroyed Holme's renegade settlement, and he encountered Holme in an abandoned mine shaft that Crazy Horse had told him about. Black attempted to get Holme to surrender, but Holme drew his gun in self defense - Black shot him in the chest, and Holme fell backwards into the mine shaft with some barrels of powder, killing him.

Black returned to Custer empty-handed, telling him that Holme was dead. Custer informed him that he was marching to attack the Sioux, and he told Black that the time for negotiations was over. When Custer told Black that he could not sit on the fence any longer, Black bade him goodbye and rode off to join the Sioux at Medicine Tail Coulee. Black joined Crazy Horse and his warriors there, and he formed alliances with Cheyenne chiefs Two Moon, Brave Wolf, and Bull Bear, destroying all of Custer's buildings and holding off attacks on the village. Later, Custer's main army arrived to attack the Sioux settlement, but Black and the Sioux and Cheyenne massacred Custer and his men. The victory completed Black's ostracization from white society, and he lived among the Sioux for fourteen more years. On 29 December 1890, Black was killed in the Wounded Knee Massacre by the US Army while surrendering with other Sioux runaways.